At the end of this week’s Parshah after Miriam speaks negatively against her brother Moshe, the Torah reinforces Moshe’s position – “and the man Moshe was exceedingly humble, more than any other man on the face of the earth”. At the end of davening in ‘Yigdal’ we say, “In Israel none like Moshe arose again” yet it is interesting to note that out of all the praises that are bestowed upon this great man, Hashem singles him out for his extreme humility.
An amazing show of self-effacement happened with R’ Moshe Isserlis some five hundred years ago. Unbeknown to each other he and R’ Yosef Cairo were each writing the very first Shulchan Aruch – Code of Jewish Law; R’ Isserlis in Krakow and his contemporary in Spain. Before R’ Isserlis had managed to publish his work R’ Cairo published his. R’ Isserlis now had two choices. Does he continue and complete his work and publish a second Shulchan Aruch for Eastern Europeans [Ashkenazi Jewry] or does he undo much of his hard work and re-write his entire work as a series of footnotes to the work of R’ Cairo? Anyone who has ever opened up a Shulchan Aruch will see the decision of R’ Isserlis. Rather then further split the Sephardim and Ashkenazim in a supreme act of humility he chose to become literately ‘just a footnote in history’ and just pointed out where the differences lie between Sephardim and Ashkenazim.
As a postscript, recently I had the privilege of seeing a copy of the Shulchan Aruch which was over 450years old – in it one can see the original way R’ Isserlis was a footnote on the page – unlike the modern copies where the printer’s have inserted his glosses amidst the text of R’ Cairo.
Out of all the bad character traits haughtiness is particularly bad. The Orchos Tzadikim has twenty eight chapters each discussing a different character trait. His first chapter is “haughtiness”. Why? In his words, “I have not seen a more detrimental character trait than that of haughtiness”. In his first chapter he brings down the severity that the Torah and the sages place on this trait. In the Torah itself there are three instances when we are warned against it. The Talmud relates that Hashem says about the haughty person, “I cannot dwell in the same place as the haughty”.
The Talmud in another place explains that an arrogant person will not be able to have any control even in his own house, as the verse says, “a haughty man, his dwelling shall not remain”. There is an inherent feeling that when people come across in an arrogant and conceited way, we just cannot listen to them.
Why is it that haughtiness is such a despicable trait – one that Hashem despises, and one which destroys the relationship between child and parent, or between spouses? The answer is that arrogance is a ‘chutzpah’. In reality man with all his great achievements is puny compared to Hashem. How can a man be arrogant when he realises the fragility of his life? It only takes a second for Hashem to put us in our place G-d forbid. Any accomplishments we achieve are only possible because Hashem gave us the strength to do them. Hashem therefore should be seen as so overshadowing in our lives that we should feel dwarfed with any achievements that we make.
My uncle Rabbi Baars showed me an amazing video of the first rocket to circle the moon. In 1967 as the rocket – Apollo 8 – came around the moon, the earth was viewed in a way that had never been seen by mankind before. Spontaneously the astronaut who was reporting back to earth, burst forth with the first words of the Bible, “In the beginning G-d created…..” The awesomeness of creation was so apparent to him, he saw G-d staring at him in the face. Unfortunately years later, a picture of the earth taken from outer space doesn’t awaken us to the fact of a creator, but back then it did. Incidentally a closer look at most of nature, or our bodies should trigger the same humbling experience that the astronauts both in the sky and in the trench felt!
My father-in-law pointed out that at that very inspiring moment we would have expected that the most predominant feeling would have been one of pride. Pride over the justification of spending billions of dollars for a successful mission, pride for a mission that beat Russia by being the first to circumvent the moon, pride for all the hundreds of scientists, technicians, mathematicians and the like whose minds had worked to make it all happen. But with all of this, when man realised his puniness in comparison to the grandeur of the world, man was humbled and broke out with verses from Genesis.
It didn’t take long however for G-d to be taken out the equation, noted my father-in-law. Three years later when man landed on the moon, we heard, “that’s one small step for man; one giant leap for mankind”. Man when left unchecked can very quickly run away with himself, and so the quest for humility is perhaps the foremost of all character traits.
Now we can further appreciate why Moshe the greatest man – the man with the most clarity of what Hashem is – was the humblest man on this earth. His great levels actually brought him to realize his puniness.
Good Shabbos, Yaakov